Gadget guide Guizmodo reports on a mad money-making scheme to create three, half-carat fake diamonds from ten strands of Beethoven’s hair and sell them on eBay for $1 million each. Read full reports here and here.

News from The Charlotte Symphony released September 17, 2007:The Charlotte Symphony is committed to engaging a young audience in the excitement of live orchestral music. In a new twist to the old “Student Rush” idea, the Symphony will now offer $10 advance tickets to anyone 25 years old or younger for all 2007-2008 Classics and Pops concerts at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

There are dates that come along once in a generation during which something occurs – usually catastrophic in nature – that indelibly impresses the date in our collective memories.
No one who witnessed September 11th, 2001, even from afar, will ever forget those events. The anniversary of the attacks has been triggering such memories in me for years, and apart from the images of horror we’re all familiar with, my memories revolve around WDAV.

(From an EMF press release issued 9/5/07)
Greensboro, NC – Samuel LeBauer, Chair of the Eastern Music Festival Board of Directors, announced today the appointment of Gerard Schwarz to the position of Music Director of the Eastern Music Festival & School through 2011. Maestro Schwarz, Music Director of the Seattle Symphony, has served as EMF’s Principal Conductor since 2005 and now assumes the highest artistic position in the organization. LeBauer noted, “Eastern Music Festival will quickly rise to new heights of artistic excellence under Maestro Schwarz’ continued leadership and more intense involvement. The Board, Staff and audience members are elated that he has committed to four more seasons with EMF.”

The opening theme from Hugo Alfven’s Swedish Rhapsody appears to have caught the fancy of many a musician. Be advised: not all performances are created equally. Be warned: this tune will be going through your head for the rest of the day.

After a long battle with pancreatic cancer, tenor Luciano Pavarotti has died at age 71.
Read the New York Times tribute to the “Italian singer whose ringing, pristine sound set a standard for operatic tenors of the postwar era” here. View and listen to NPR’s tribute to “The King of the High Cs” here.
Hear a celebration of Pavarotti’s life and career on Performance Today.
Read “Pavarotti: High Cs and other heights” in the LA Times here.
Nessun Dorma

Schubert’s Ave Maria

Celeste Aida

Una Furtiva Lagrima

A sensational moment from The Three Tenors phenomenon

Pavarotti at age 33
I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent and this is what I have devoted my life to.
–Luciano Pavarotti, 1935 – 2007